Creationist Research on Human Origins

A new preprint on the Little Foot skull was posted today. Interestingly, the article is written by Ron Clarke and Kathleen Kuman alone. I’m used to seeing a long list of authors on most modern papers, so this one is a bit of a throwback. The article fills in a few more details on the … More The Skull: Early lessons from Little Foot

The first papers describing the infamous Little Foot fossil have started appearing as preprints on bioRxiv. Pieces of Little Foot were originally discovered in 1994—just four bones of the left foot. A further search through the Silberberg Grotto in the Sterkfontein Cave eventually revealed parts of the rest of the skeleton in 1998. Further excavation … More It’s a girl! Early lessons from Little Foot

When did people start making fire? The earliest discussion of burning or fire I can find in Genesis is Noah’s sacrifice after the Flood. We might presume that the offering that sparked (see what I did there?) Abel’s murder was also a burnt sacrifice, but Genesis doesn’t say that. It just says they brought offerings. … More Ancient Fire

New research from the Max Planck Institute implicates Neandertals in the creation of tools and ornaments from the Grotto du Renne deposits in France. The work by Welker and colleagues describes molecular analysis of bone fragments recovered from the Châtelperronian deposits of Grotto du Renne. The Châtelperronian is known for its sophisticated tools, body ornaments, and pigments, all of … More The Art of the Neandertal

The question of our own human creation has become increasingly contentious among evangelical theologians and scientists. Some theologians insist that the historicity of Adam and Eve is not theologically important, and evolutionary scientists continue to maintain that human evolution does not support the descent of modern humans from a single couple. New fossil discoveries regularly … More Call for Papers: Human Origins 2017

New research on a cave in southwestern France is once again highlighting how advanced Neandertals really were. We already knew Neandertals were able to fashion sophisticated stone tools, use fire, and bury their dead. There’s also sparse evidence of bone tools, jewelry, and pigments all made by Neandertals. In the young-age creationist community, the consensus … More Neandertals Continue to Surprise in the South of France

In September of 2015, Lee Berger and his research colleagues announced to the world a new species of hominin they called Homo naledi. The remains of Homo naledi were found in a cave chamber (the Dinaledi chamber) in the Rising Star Cave system right next to the famous Swartkrans and Sterkfontein deposits in South Africa. As … More Did Homo naledi bury its dead?

I’ve been writing about human origins for more than 20 years. My first formal creationist publication was a letter to the editor of the Creation Research Society Quarterly about the “Mitochondrial Eve.” Later, I commented on the human genome for ICR [PDF], and the chimp genome for the Creation Biology Society. My most significant work on human origins … More Introducing Human Genesis